Opinion Guess who’s (not) coming to dinner?

When was the last time you invited people into your home for dinner? Wait, it can’t be a work function or a major holiday. Just an ordinary Saturday night with a few friends, some food, a few bottles of wine and absolutely no reason to celebrate anything. Give it some thought. We’ll wait.

OK, that’s what I thought. If you’re having trouble remembering if it was before or after COVID-19, you’re not alone. According to a recent survey, we’ve abandoned one of the great American pastimes: the dinner party. Up until 1975, 42 percent of Americans said they entertained in their homes at least once per month. By 2026, that number had fallen to just 12 percent. That’s a decline of roughly 70 percent in half a century.

Growing up, I always knew my parents were having a dinner party when the butter mints and ashtrays came out. The disappearance of the butter mints and ashtrays signals a distinct shift in how we’ve chosen to live our lives. Nearly one-third of Americans didn’t entertain anyone in their homes even once during the past year.

How ironic. Most Americans are investing heavily in creating the perfect space to live, work and play. Modern homes feature kitchens that are bigger than an Amazon data center. With center islands the size of Delaware. Those enormous spaces are perfect for entertaining. Many homes now feature institutional gas-fed appliances from companies like Wolf and Viking. Some feature eight burners, a griddle and a massive double oven. Who will use eight burners in 2026? Sub-Zero refrigerators are large enough to hide a body and can run as much as $38,000. You could feed an army of people with that kind of culinary horsepower, but few do. Don’t forget outdoor entertaining spaces, ice makers, wine refrigerators and enough kitchen gadgets and knives to equip a restaurant.

So, why exactly are we buying all these industrial cooking appliances to heat up leftover pizza from Tuesday night? Nobody knows. It’s not just dinner parties. Americans are spending less time playing cards, attending community meetings, volunteering, visiting neighbors and generally doing things with other humans.

See, to invite someone into your home is to bring them into your private life. To possibly meet your kids and the dog and see how you really live. There’s an intimacy in inviting someone into your home, especially if they come to stay overnight, to sleep in your home.

Somewhere along the way, we confused hospitality with entertaining. They aren’t the same thing. See, entertaining is making sure the napkins are pressed, the unoaked chardonnay is perfectly chilled and the artichoke dip isn’t too salty.

Hospitality is something different. It’s about making people feel at home, comfortable and welcome. It’s not about the mismatched towels in the half-bath. It’s not about the stain on the den carpet where the dog threw up in 2019. As pastor Hal Brady once said, “We are never closer to God than when we express the simple gestures of friendship and hospitality.” Amen.

We’ve managed to take all of the fun out of hospitality by confusing it with entertaining. We’ve turned something fun into a high-stakes performance. An evening with friends becomes an elaborate production, as if we could stumble and get a bad review on Yelp because the couscous was bland.

We’ve spent decades designing homes that offer more privacy, comfort, convenience and entertainment spaces than any previous generation could have imagined. And now we rarely invite anyone inside to see it. We’ve built wonderful places to live. Perhaps we’ve forgotten that a meaningful life requires more than a wonderful house to live in. All those fancy appliances seem to be more about keeping up with the Joneses and less about inviting the Joneses over for dinner.

Years from now, nobody is going to remember that the chicken was dry and you burned the rice. They’re going to remember the conversations, the laughter and the feeling that someone wanted them there. With so few dinner parties, the exceedingly rare invitation is more than an invitation to dinner. It’s an invitation to friendship.

Which brings me back to that original question. When was the last time you invited a few friends over for no particular reason? Maybe it’s time to send an invitation. Order a few pizzas, open a bottle of wine and leave the mismatched towels exactly where they are. After all, the point was never about entertaining. It was about friendship and hospitality.

I’m just a regular guy sitting in a Waffle House pecking on a keyboard. Send me an email at [email protected]. I promise that you’ll hear back from me ’cause, you know, I’m a real person and all.